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Health Cabinet Secretary Susan Nakhumicha has announced plans to rebrand the National Health Insurance Fund.
CS Nakhumicha made the announcement on Thursday, February 2, when she opened the Inaugural National Cancer Summit organized by the National Cancer Institute of Kenya at Safari Park Hotel in Nairobi.
She revealed that NHIF will be renamed the National Social Health Insurance Fund.
"For us to drive this universal healthcare, we have to bring everybody on board. That is why we already have a team working and in the next few months, we are going to roll out NSHIF," CS Nakhumicha stated.
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The Cabinet Secretary said that the rollout of NSHIF is likely to happen in July and will be part of the Universal Health Coverage reforms.
“I am targeting to have the National Social Health Insurance Fund rolled out by July. This fund will leave no one behind and every Kenyan will have access to health,” CS Nakhumicha stated.
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According to documents from the Kenya Institute for Public Policy Research and Analysis (KIPPRA), proposals to rebrand NHIF to NSHIF began as early as 2004.
“The government plans to transform the current NHIF to a National Social Health Insurance Fund (NSHIF) as a way of ensuring equity and access to health services by the poor and those in the informal sector, who have been left out for the forty years that the NHIF has been in existence,” reads a discussion paper authored by Diana N. Kimani, David I. Muthaka and Damiano K. Manda.
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This means that vulnerable groups need relatively more healthcare, and leaving them out negates the government's objective of making health services affordable and accessible.